It's Passion Week here in Georgia and anywhere where the Julian calendar is still used to calculate church feasts, resulting in Easter this year being celebrated a week later than in the Western Gregorian system. Easter, the terminus of Passion Week, in Georgian is "kristes aghdgoma", literally "Christ's rising-up." A nice result of the importance of this period of time in Georgia is an extended holiday from school. I've already used my time off to visit the great Gurian song-master Tristan Sikharulidze in Makvaneti, and will head to Gelati Monastery in Imereti to hear their famed choirs for the Good Friday and Easter Vigil services. Each of these trips will be featured in feature posts.
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| Francesco's host family at their shop, with Kristina, our invaluable translator |
I had been to Zugdidi once before, in January, when traveling with Teatr ZAR to Svaneti. Zugdidi is the closest city to upper Svaneti, and in addition to being a major stopping place for marshutkas en route, it's where anyone needing supplies of any kind (oil, car parts, hiking equipment, etc.) loads up before heading into the Svanetian mountains, where resources are scarce. My impression of Zugdidi at that time was decidedly unpleasant, thanks to the bitter cold, the recent heavy snowfall, the smoke-filled cafes, the seemingly inscrutable inhabitants, and murmurs of danger being so close to the disputed border of Abkhazia. Nowadays, a tense stability makes such worries largely unfounded, though 5-10 years ago, separatists had made raids in Zugdidi, and the city has been undoubtedly altered – something like 30,000 displaced persons from Abkhazia swelled the city to double its size, leading to a sort of urban sprawl.
The boundless hospitality of the families I met did much to dispel my original impression of the region, where Mingrelian, a language related to Georgian but mutually unintelligible with it, is spoken at home and among friends. After a feast at Francesco's host family's home on Friday night, the two children in the family and a cousin who spoke excellent English, took me to the Dadiani palace museum in the city. This was the home of the Dadiani family, who had been kings of Samegrelo until the early 19th century, and whose artwork and furnishings showed strong influence from Russia and France. An in-law of the family was descended from one of Napoléon I's generals, and thus the museum is one of three places where an original bronze death-mask of Napoléon is displayed. I was struck to see, in the ornate bookcases of one of the sitting rooms, a large number of music scores – most of them, it seemed to me, were long-forgotten 19th-century French operas and operettas in a piano-vocal arrangement. It was raining that day, and none of the pictures I took are much to speak of.
Sadly, I also don't have any pictures from later that night, when Francesco, two other TLG volunteers, and I, were hosted at a supra in the village of Kakhati. The lack of photos owes more to my inability to do two things at once: I was too busy operating my portable recorder, and forgot to hand off my camera to one of my fellow guests. Our hosts were two brothers, who knew many Georgian and Mingrelian songs, and were happy to oblige us right from the beginning. Here's the song they sang for us first:
You can also hear one of their daughters singing with them here. She had a lovely, piercing voice, and joined in with some songs later in the evening, after her duties preparing and serving the food with her mother, aunts, and cousins, was more or less concluded. There are actually three brothers in this family, and in their full complement they're able to cover the three vocal parts of all traditional Georgian music. What we heard that night, and what I'm sharing here, was not the best representation of these brothers' skill, missing, as it were, the bass. In these recordings, you can often hear one of the brothers sliding between the middle and lower part, when the harmony particularly requires it. Nonetheless, I was awed by the power of their voices, which were still strong and strident two hours of singing later. Their third brother, apparently, lives in Tbilisi, but returns from time to time, like at Easter. I hope to return at some later point to record the men with full harmony.
There was so much food – when we walked in, there was simmering on the wood stove a giant pot of ghumi, a tasty kind of white cornmeal polenta, into which you plunge pieces of cheese. To stir the pot, a spoon approximately the size of a boat paddle was required. The Mingrelian way with roast chicken was also delectable, cut up into crispy-skinned pieces that are impossible not to eat with your hands. And where there's food in Georgia, of course, there's wine. Three toasts in, the brothers took out a crystal drinking-horn, clearly reserved for special toasts. In this case, the subject of the toast was us, the guests. After downing the horn, the younger brother offered it round. Francesco's host father accepted, and one or two other Georgians – I was the only foreign guest who took the offer, and managed somehow to accomplish the feat without pausing in the middle. It was the least I could do …
Now was my chance to show them the one or two Mingrelian songs I had up my sleeve. First I tried one called "va giorko ma", which I believe means "You Don't Love Me." As soon as I started, the brothers and other guests joined in. I reproduce part of the song here, with apologies for the prominence of my voice in the mix, owing to the fact that I had the recorder on the table in front of me. You can also hear me missing a point in the song where, apparently, you're supposed to repeat the previous phrase before going on to the next section. It was great fun, all the same:
A few toasts, and songs expertly sung by the brothers, later, I proposed the Aslanuri Mravalzhamier (I linked to a YouTube video of this song in a previous post. The results aren't worth sharing, but I loved the Mingrelian Mravalzhamier (each region, practically, has its own Mravalzhamier, the traditional toasting song) that the brothers sang in response:
Finally, we sang the one Acharan song I'd learned up to that point, "Ts'qals Napoti", (which I talked about here). At first I stuck to a lower bass part (which I was kind of making up) and let the brothers sing the top two lines, but after one time through, and with people clapping to the beat, I started the song over again, and everyone joined in with gusto. This was the participatory highlight of the evening for me:
All together, the two brothers sang something like twelve songs. My ear for either the language or style is not enough for me to discern specifically Mingrelian traits in the songs, and it's very possible that some of the pieces they sang were from other regions. Everything they sang, though, was infused with lyricism and a sense of sweet harmony, somewhere between the languid melismas of Kakhetian table songs, and the restless, often dissonant puzzles of Gurian songcraft. One of the most revealing moments of the night for me came when I asked if another song I knew, "Ia Patonepi," was Mingrelian. It was, they confirmed for me, but explained that they wouldn't sing it at a supra. I had known that the song derived from a tradition where songs were sung around the bed of an ill person, in the belief that the pretty songs would dispel the spirits making the person sick. It was striking, nonetheless, to realize that such songs still have a specific power among these communities, and are reserved for specific occasions in the life of the family.
Toward the end of the night, the young people in our hosts' family began to take control, which meant pop songs being played from the computer and all of the male guests (myself, Francesco, and Shane) dancing with the young ladies present. Then, with the suddenness that always seems to mark the end of Georgian parties, we gathered our things and were back in the taxis heading home for Zugdidi. The taxi drivers, by the way, sat at the table with us, participating in the feast, thankfully excluding the toasting part.
The next day, somewhat the worse for wear, I went sight-seeing with Francesco, his host sister, and another volunteer, to the village of Tsalenjika. The main site to see here is a church, perched high on a hill (as so many are), and featuring striking frescoes from the 11th-12th centuries, the "Golden Age" of Georgian culture. The artwork is in pretty bad shape, but what remains is haunting, bringing to mind the frescoes I had seen inside the church in Svaneti, though in a more refined, less immediate style. This was the first church I've been in, also, that truly had no artificial light inside, which made me appreciate the construction of windows and the importance of candles, omnipresent in Orthodox churches, even more.
We also stumbled upon the House-Museum of a minor Georgian poet, Terenti Graneli (1901-1934), of apparently melancholy disposition, who was born in town. After a brief return to Zugdidi and a cup of coffee at the "American Bar" in town, I found myself once again riding along the Black Sea coast, back home to Kobuleti, happy to have such new, positive memories of this unique region.
NEXT TIME: Private Master Class with a Gurian Song-Master
The boundless hospitality of the families I met did much to dispel my original impression of the region, where Mingrelian, a language related to Georgian but mutually unintelligible with it, is spoken at home and among friends. After a feast at Francesco's host family's home on Friday night, the two children in the family and a cousin who spoke excellent English, took me to the Dadiani palace museum in the city. This was the home of the Dadiani family, who had been kings of Samegrelo until the early 19th century, and whose artwork and furnishings showed strong influence from Russia and France. An in-law of the family was descended from one of Napoléon I's generals, and thus the museum is one of three places where an original bronze death-mask of Napoléon is displayed. I was struck to see, in the ornate bookcases of one of the sitting rooms, a large number of music scores – most of them, it seemed to me, were long-forgotten 19th-century French operas and operettas in a piano-vocal arrangement. It was raining that day, and none of the pictures I took are much to speak of.
Sadly, I also don't have any pictures from later that night, when Francesco, two other TLG volunteers, and I, were hosted at a supra in the village of Kakhati. The lack of photos owes more to my inability to do two things at once: I was too busy operating my portable recorder, and forgot to hand off my camera to one of my fellow guests. Our hosts were two brothers, who knew many Georgian and Mingrelian songs, and were happy to oblige us right from the beginning. Here's the song they sang for us first:
You can also hear one of their daughters singing with them here. She had a lovely, piercing voice, and joined in with some songs later in the evening, after her duties preparing and serving the food with her mother, aunts, and cousins, was more or less concluded. There are actually three brothers in this family, and in their full complement they're able to cover the three vocal parts of all traditional Georgian music. What we heard that night, and what I'm sharing here, was not the best representation of these brothers' skill, missing, as it were, the bass. In these recordings, you can often hear one of the brothers sliding between the middle and lower part, when the harmony particularly requires it. Nonetheless, I was awed by the power of their voices, which were still strong and strident two hours of singing later. Their third brother, apparently, lives in Tbilisi, but returns from time to time, like at Easter. I hope to return at some later point to record the men with full harmony.
There was so much food – when we walked in, there was simmering on the wood stove a giant pot of ghumi, a tasty kind of white cornmeal polenta, into which you plunge pieces of cheese. To stir the pot, a spoon approximately the size of a boat paddle was required. The Mingrelian way with roast chicken was also delectable, cut up into crispy-skinned pieces that are impossible not to eat with your hands. And where there's food in Georgia, of course, there's wine. Three toasts in, the brothers took out a crystal drinking-horn, clearly reserved for special toasts. In this case, the subject of the toast was us, the guests. After downing the horn, the younger brother offered it round. Francesco's host father accepted, and one or two other Georgians – I was the only foreign guest who took the offer, and managed somehow to accomplish the feat without pausing in the middle. It was the least I could do …
 |
| I would estimate a half-liter as the volume of the horn at our feast. No wonder some later events from that evening are a blur … |
Now was my chance to show them the one or two Mingrelian songs I had up my sleeve. First I tried one called "va giorko ma", which I believe means "You Don't Love Me." As soon as I started, the brothers and other guests joined in. I reproduce part of the song here, with apologies for the prominence of my voice in the mix, owing to the fact that I had the recorder on the table in front of me. You can also hear me missing a point in the song where, apparently, you're supposed to repeat the previous phrase before going on to the next section. It was great fun, all the same:
A few toasts, and songs expertly sung by the brothers, later, I proposed the Aslanuri Mravalzhamier (I linked to a YouTube video of this song in a previous post. The results aren't worth sharing, but I loved the Mingrelian Mravalzhamier (each region, practically, has its own Mravalzhamier, the traditional toasting song) that the brothers sang in response:
Finally, we sang the one Acharan song I'd learned up to that point, "Ts'qals Napoti", (which I talked about here). At first I stuck to a lower bass part (which I was kind of making up) and let the brothers sing the top two lines, but after one time through, and with people clapping to the beat, I started the song over again, and everyone joined in with gusto. This was the participatory highlight of the evening for me:
All together, the two brothers sang something like twelve songs. My ear for either the language or style is not enough for me to discern specifically Mingrelian traits in the songs, and it's very possible that some of the pieces they sang were from other regions. Everything they sang, though, was infused with lyricism and a sense of sweet harmony, somewhere between the languid melismas of Kakhetian table songs, and the restless, often dissonant puzzles of Gurian songcraft. One of the most revealing moments of the night for me came when I asked if another song I knew, "Ia Patonepi," was Mingrelian. It was, they confirmed for me, but explained that they wouldn't sing it at a supra. I had known that the song derived from a tradition where songs were sung around the bed of an ill person, in the belief that the pretty songs would dispel the spirits making the person sick. It was striking, nonetheless, to realize that such songs still have a specific power among these communities, and are reserved for specific occasions in the life of the family.
Toward the end of the night, the young people in our hosts' family began to take control, which meant pop songs being played from the computer and all of the male guests (myself, Francesco, and Shane) dancing with the young ladies present. Then, with the suddenness that always seems to mark the end of Georgian parties, we gathered our things and were back in the taxis heading home for Zugdidi. The taxi drivers, by the way, sat at the table with us, participating in the feast, thankfully excluding the toasting part.
The next day, somewhat the worse for wear, I went sight-seeing with Francesco, his host sister, and another volunteer, to the village of Tsalenjika. The main site to see here is a church, perched high on a hill (as so many are), and featuring striking frescoes from the 11th-12th centuries, the "Golden Age" of Georgian culture. The artwork is in pretty bad shape, but what remains is haunting, bringing to mind the frescoes I had seen inside the church in Svaneti, though in a more refined, less immediate style. This was the first church I've been in, also, that truly had no artificial light inside, which made me appreciate the construction of windows and the importance of candles, omnipresent in Orthodox churches, even more.
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| The cupola (is that the right word?) of the church in Tsalenjika. |
NEXT TIME: Private Master Class with a Gurian Song-Master
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